Bad user interface, part 37

Here's the thing. If you’re going to perform background tasks, do it in the background. Obviously. And God help you if you pop-up a dialog later to inform me that whatever you were doing completed successfully.

Put simply, let me know if something is really wrong, but get out of my face otherwise.

Discuss this Article 31

Even OneCare (which was written for an audience that really does like getting those "toast" messages - we tested it a LOT in the usability labs) just changes the icon in the notifier bar for most of the "we're doing stuff in the background"
In Norton's defense, and I can't believe I'm saying something in their defense, the notification level that's ideal changes wildly between casual users, hobbiests and professional PC users and the integrated suites are meant for the casual users.

That's why Norton is banished from my computers. When I got my personal laptop (which was a few years ago) it came with a 90 day trial of Norton Internet Security 2005. As I started setting it up, Norton wanted to download updates and run scans. I like to run with my taskbar hidden, and it seemed like Norton had to constantly flash my taskbar to tell me each and every file it downloaded or scanned. I am exaggerating, but not by much. About 30 days before the expiration of the trial, Norton decided to let me know twice a day that the trial was to expire and I needed to purchase a license. I opted to uninstall it and vow never to use it again instead. McAfee isn't any better either.

@Blakes7
I agree with you, I think the reason Norton pops up a message for everything it does to make people believe that it is actually doing something important in your computer (make them fell lest rip-off). I really hate Norton all it ever did for me was annoy me and slow down my startup.

Would you believe a 1999 Dodge? It's my new car, replacing the 1986 Ford Taurus on which I put 387,000 miles.
Oh, and I use OneCare.
I used Norton on a Win98 laptop (bought before XP). One day at computer club, Norton updated itself and the machine refused to start up. Norton's web site suggested uninstalling Norton (manually using instructions which printed to 6 pages) and reinstall.
So I uninstalled Norton and installed AVG.

Heres an issue I'd like Pauls opinion on:
>>Sinofsky told us that there will be no ability to enable the old taskbar since, in Microsoft's opinion, the new taskbar's leap in usability negates the need for a "less-able" option.<<
Some interesting commentary here (I think the 'S' man himself made an appearance):
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/372005082731/m/264004...

And I would like to drive an Audi but those idiots stopped selling the 5 (or 6 spd) manual version of the A4 in the US.
But isn't this good for the average Joe? He'll at least know that the system is slow because some background tasks are being run. No?

Ocean, well the new taskbar *is* the old taskbar with additional functionality. So if you don't want to mix and match shortcuts with running applications, you don't have to. This isn't as bad as, say, the move to Windows 95 from Windows 3.1. Some peopl actually missed Program Manager. Those people, were, of course, delusional. :)

The new taskbar, at least in theory, is great. We won't see one icon in the Quick Launch bar, one in the notification area, and one in the taskbar (if the application is open). This leaves the notification area uncluttered for important messages like the one from Norton.
People are inherently resistant to change. It was the same with the Ribbon interface in Office '07. There has been some talk about Microsoft possibly abandoning the new taskbar and going back to the old one. I don't think it should.

"So I uninstalled Norton and installed AVG."
I get computers in all the time with viruses on them. The vast majority are XP.
Rogers offers Norton Antivirus for free when you use them as an ISP. It's part of the mish-mash called "Yahoo Internet Protection" with a 3rd-party firewall, and yet other 3rd-party spam and antispyware products managed by this crap Yahoo console.
I see many of those machines, and many with AVG.
What's funny is that I see many with protection that is fully enabled, fully up-to-date, and yet they still end up getting viruses and spyware. In many cases, AVG, Norton, or whatever, don't actually detect the virus until you do a full disk scan with them. Sometimes they do at that point.
This begs the question: If the antivirus was working properly, meaning the on-access scanner, how did those viruses get saved to the hard drive in the first place?
Oh, and BTW: I see MANY AVG & Norton 2007+ systems with "[Win]Antivirus [Pro] 2006/2007/2008/2009" too.
OneCare blocks installation of it.

Paul
Speaking of Windows 3.1, I'd like to remind people (I think you mentioned it in Short Takes a while back) that today is the last day that Windows for Workgroups 3.11 can be sold in any channel. It hadn't been available in the retail or OEM channels for a long time and got replaced in most channels 13 years ago but could, technically, still be licensed in some cases for the embedded market.
So, here's to the end of an era. Effective Midnight tonight, MS-DOS based Windows is no longer available...

Wae
Any modern antivirus will have two parts, a real-time detection system (often with both signature and heuristic detection) and an on-demand scanner.
The way you'd see a virus on a system with an installed antivirus is generally one of two things.
1) Somebody turned the real-time protection off because it slowed the system down. This wasn't that unusual a few years back when real-time detection was insanely slow and bad with resources. Unfortunately, some people just got into the habit of turning real-time off even after they got better.
2) A zero-day attack where the virus installed before there was a signature update and either there was no heuristics present in that particular antivirus system or the virus' behavior didn't trigger the heuristics rules.

Wae
Just to clarify, OneCare will block you from having two antivirus systems running at one time. For example, it will not install itself if you have an antivirus currently running.
Having two antivirus systems running at the same time can cause real problems.

@Mike:
I don't think you understood what I wrote. I didn't mean that OneCare blocks Norton or AVG.
OneCare blocks WinAntivirus. It actually correctly detects it as "badware" (not the term they use - I think they classify it as a trojan downloader or something - it is illegitimate/fake antivirus software though). Norton and AVG antispyware products currently don't remove it properly, even though it's been floating around for a few years now. Originally it was called "WinFixer", but most common variations are known as "WinAntivirus" or "Antivirus 200x".
I see many systems with Norton up to date, and they still get it to this day, even WITH the on-access scanner on. I can also turn around and run the on-demand scanner and often it will pick stuff up when the on-access scanner won't. This means the malware is able to circumvent running processes on the machine. WinAntivirus will install usually from another trojan downloader that was downloaded earlier on the system. In many situations, even when Norton is "green" (meaning all processes are supposed to be running properly - including the on-access scanner), it will detect the original trojan when I perform a disk scan. Trouble is, the on-access scanner often gets partially disabled by the trojan, even though the console reports everything is A-OK. That's why the on-demand scanner picks it up, while the on-access one doesn't. It also makes it difficult to remove, because you'd have to track and kill running processes in order to delete the file. Since the on-access scanner doesn't always detect it, you're stuck at a Catch-22. Norton is the most common and well-known antivirus software, so it makes sense for virus writers to try and attack that. AVG is also well known because it's free.
The point of the story is:
WinAntivirus, BAD
OneCare, GOOD
Norton/AVG, GARBAGE!
Related phun:
If you want an easy (and kinda "safe") way to download a virus, here's how:
1) Download Limewire
2) Run it, and search for "Norton Antivirus"
3) Look for search results of about 370kb
4) Download the ZIP file
5) Extract it, and run the EXE on a computer you want to destroy
It's that easy!
(That's how bad Limewire's network is for anyone that doesn't think it is - most MP3's also contain ID3 tags that take you to malicious websites that also have trojan downloaders & browser hijackers too. OneCare will often pick up bad MP3's, but not always.)
Another way is to just install Kazaa or Morpheus - Kazaa has about 6 pieces of spyware/adware, and the Morpheus installer has a trojan downloader that launches as soon as you double-click the EXE, all as detected by OneCare.
Go ahead and try this on a fresh install of Windows that you can blow away (make sure it's the only PC on a network for safety reasons). You'll see what I mean. For informational purposes, install OneCare before attempting this. For more of a laugh, don't, and watch the results when you surf.

Waethorn,
Ah. That's different. I did misunderstand what you were saying.
The case of malware that the user voluntarily installs is always a tough one. Since the user actually DID typically accept the terms of the agreement the anti-malware vendor really can't remove the malware without the user's OK.
That's a big reason why there are often separate programs for anti-virus and anti-spyware and almost always separate signature files. In the case of spyware, while the user didn't realize that the freeware app they chose to install had a clause buried in page 8 of a 12 page license agreement that said the vendor could install spyware, the user did agree to it. Often adding that sentence to the agreement was what paid for the software the user did choose to install. And the problem is that what's legitimate in one case (say ad sponsored software) is not in another case (spyware installing software).

As for:
"The point of the story is: ... OneCare, GOOD ..."
As a part of the team that designed OneCare 1.0, thanks. It's always nice to hear that the choices we made paid off for our users.
(I'm at that nice point in the product cycle where my version of the product has been rev'd so praise for the design can be taken and criticism can be justified as the fault of the new people who should have fixed whatever we did wrong)
:-)

Thanks for the screenshots, roberts. The Windows 7 UI looks very cool.
"Truly bad. This is even worse. No taste."
Hey, don't worry about your lack of taste. It's usually acquired. I'm sure visiting a Windows site on your MacBook is not something your peers would call tasteful.

I've been pleasantly surprised by Norton Antivirus 2009. I wouldn't touch the security suite but the plain vanilla av seems resource friendly and effective. Hard to tell when the scans never find anyting regardless of what I run.
NOD32 which is what I use on my laptop still seems the lightest and most effective av I've used.

I remember the transition from Windows 3.x's Program Manager and File Manager. For the most part many people transitioned to the new system fairly easily, especially when it came to managing files on their computers; which was always a chore in Windows 3.1, even something simple like renaming a file was a freaking nightmare.
The new taskbar doesn't look like it will cause much problem to be honest. The thing is that the taskbar was designed for screen resolutions of 640x480 (and 800x600 if you were lucky) with 4 and 8bit colour depths back in 93/94. It's now 2008 and when Windows 7 it'll be nigh on 2010 if not 2010 and things have changed. Many businesses run with multiple monitors, a lot of people have bigger screens and the taskbar as it stands whilst much better than the Dock on OS X is getting to be something of a hinderance, especially with lots open where all you see is Pr.. Fi.. Wo.. etc :)
As for the troll here, it's fairly clear that they don't know what they're talking about so the only thing to do is talk crap that's been heard somewhere on the grapevine.
In terms of usability the new Taskbar does look to be still a lot more usable than the OS X Dock. When I sold Apple machines (between 2005-06) and was demo-ing the OS to new users, they all loved the look and though it looked neat. But I had a good 6 out of 10 people squinting for the little arrowhead under icons when I explained "That shows if the app is running", and it was painful to see the expression and comments afterward of "Bit small isn't it?" -- then they realise, "So this contains both closed and running apps" and further still "But it says here Safari is running but I can't see any window" -- the Dock is a mess.
Simarlarly from experience much as multiple monitor work on Windows is a bit sucky when you need to zip over to the primary screen for the taskbar/start menu, so is the Mac but perhaps a bit worse for having that fixed menu at the top of the primary screen, as well as the Dock.
I still use Mac OS X daily almost, as well as my Vista and XP PCs. Out of all of them I find Vista the best, and OS X is a lot better than 9 ever was, but I have very little time for the Dock and fear that out of stubborness Apple will likely take a very very long time to re-work it so that it's not such a mess.

Because the screenshots of the taskbar are from the presentation given this Tuesday. All other screenshots are from the version of 7 that testers got. Remember, they don't have the new taskbar, so, you're basically judging this based on the projection on a white screen.